


In a House Made of Glass

by The_Pen_Dragon



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Bad end, Emotional Abuse, Guilt, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, PTSD, Physical Abuse, Regret, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, seriously there are 0 happy things in this fic be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22446292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Pen_Dragon/pseuds/The_Pen_Dragon
Summary: What if Akechi Goro succeeded in his plan to kill Joker?What if he got what he wanted, and Shido won?What exactly would happen then..?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	In a House Made of Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Violet911](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violet911/gifts).



> If you clicked on this ready to suffer, then thank you! I hope you enjoy the pain! I just wanted to provide a quick disclaimer here and say that if you yourself are suicidal or heavily depressed, I don't recommend reading this. 
> 
> The mindset portrayed here is very unhealthy and wholly harmful, so please proceed with that in mind.
> 
> This is a gift for my wonderful beta reader Violet911, who loves pain and sadness as much as I do. A big thanks to them, because I wouldn't write half the stuff I do without their encouragement!

When Shido won the election, no one was more excited than Akechi. This was the disgusting old man's peak, it was finally time to enact his long term plan- or that was what he had thought. Like a child who wandered obviously over a frozen lake, he had not noticed the ice thinning beneath his feet as he walked.

Shido called Akechi into his office, a celebration, he said. Akechi sat across from him for what would be the last time, his porcelain mask firmly in place as he smiled at the man he hated most in the world. 

"You've done a good job, Akechi," Shido said, a smug grin on his face, "thanks to you, I've finally achieved my goal. Now, I have a question for you."

Akechi wasn't sure why, but the calmness in Shido's voice made his blood turn to ice. He met Shido's eyes, and the spark in them, the satisfaction, it made his stomach turn. "Mm… yes, Shido san?"

The horrid man's grin grew wider, too wide, and his eyes crinkled at the edges, "did you have fun pretending, Goro?"

_ Crack. _

Akechi nearly threw up right there. His anxiety spiked through the roof, his veins on fire and his heart thrumming in his ears. The sound of his name on that man's tongue, and the implications behind it… Akechi wanted to run. He needed to, yet there he sat, rooted to the spot. Fingers curled tightly against his slacks, a slight tremble starting up in his limbs.

"I-I'm sorry?" Akechi asked, his voice wavered just slightly, one tiny slip in an otherwise doll like cadence. 

_ Crack. _

"Did you think you were fooling anyone?" Shido chuckled, "You must have been so angry this whole time, Hm? That's why you were here, wasn't it? Looking for some misguided revenge? Goro, did you really think I wouldn't recognize your mother's rat face?"

Akechi visibly recoiled, his whole body was trembling with a mix of terror and a growing rage. "I-I- don't-don't speak poorly of-"

_ Crack crack crack- _

Shido stood from his seat, walking around his desk and clapping a firm hand on Akechi's shoulder, "She used to look at me just like that you know, your eyes are the same. Pathetic, weak, loathing. But in the end, neither of you could ever rise above my influence."

_ Splash. _

Akechi had had enough, and tore himself from Shido's grasp, whirling out of his own seat. His entire body was visibly shaking, fists clenched at his sides as his legs warbled under him, overcome with sheer fury, "DON'T SPEAK OF HER LIKE THAT! SHE WAS STRONGER THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY KNOW YOU BASTARD!"

Shido had the audacity to laugh. He looked at Akechi, his own child, trembling and angry and on the brink of tears, and he laughed in his face. "You're going to be pinned for all these murders you've committed you know. All the psychotic episodes too. You'll be arrested for the crimes you committed on my behalf, and in the end, you're going to die a meaningless death, just like your mother. You really do remind me so much of her, Goro."

Akechi completely snapped, shrieking and rushing at Shido. He didn't think first, just aiming to strike him in the face. He was so furious, two years of pent up rage that boiled over and consumed his actions in less than two minutes. Swinging out with all the force he had, he was caught off guard as he was struck with a solid uppercut to the sternum. Catching him under the ribs with a powerful, well placed blow, Shido easily knocked the teen back. He sent him careening across the office, landing with a loud thud and a sharp crack as his head hit the desk.

Akechi hit the floor hard, panting and coughing. He rolled onto his side, hands curling around his stomach as his eyes began to water. It wasn't the physical pain that got to him, he had been dealt much worse. It was all of the past being roughly dredged up at once, the memories flashing through his head at light speed. Every time a guardian had struck him like this, every time he had run and hid in the closet to cry alone. Every phantom fist and foot that had left an invisible scar on him, all mixed with the heavy blow of learning that his entire plan had been pointless from the very beginning. 

_ Bad Goro. Pathetic Goro.  _

His fingers curled harshly against his shirt, shaking harder as he unwittingly started to sob. Shido laughed again. He approached his broken child, hands clasped behind his back and a triumphant smile on his face.

"Look at you. You thought you were so damn clever, too. You thought you were some kind of mastermind, playing the game from right under my nose, but in the end you were just a poor, foolish,  _ child _ ." He punctuated his words with a sharp kick to Akechi's ribs.

"Shut up," Akechi rasped, breaths coming in ragged gasps as he tried to pull himself together, "shut up shut up-" 

Shido reared one leg back, delivering a swift kick to Akechi's skull. His hands went slack against his clothes, slumping as the hit knocked all his sense out of him for a minute. "I can't stand weak little brats like you. You've served your purpose, boy, you're of no more worth to me."

Akechi's eyes struggled to focus, still coughing from the pain in his ribs. He forced himself onto his hands and knees, about screaming in frustration as his trembling limbs refused to let him stand. He hit the ground again after a futile struggle, panting, dazed, in pain.

"You were never more than an easily manipulated orphan. So angry, so eager for any kind of acceptance that you never stopped to think how short sighted your own plan was," Shido shook his head.

Akechi looked up at his father, nothing but hatred in his watery eyes. In one last ditch effort, he pulled his phone from his pocket. "Masayoshi Shido," he rasped.

"Ah, finally taking a direct approach?" The bastard asked, sitting in his chair and just looking down at Akechi, clearly amused.

"Diet building," Akechi continued, summing up what little determination he had left, one last time.

"Go ahead. When you die in there, I'll just tell the public that you went into hiding, or maybe that you took your own life to atone for all your sins."

"Ship," Akechi spat, voice a venomous whisper.

He had no idea where the nav would send him from this point. Considering the two were currently  _ in  _ the diet building, it could be anywhere. It didn't matter though, this was his last chance, he had to try.

\---

When the garish lights of the cruise ship palace swam into Akechi's vision, the first thing he saw was Joker.

He sat up so fast that the world spun on its axis, and Joker just gave a little smile before vanishing before his eyes. 

He felt himself tearing up again, all the weight of the last two years crashing into him like a freight train. Shido knew, he had known all along. It had all been for nothing. Wakaba, Okumura, Akira… the first real connection to another person he had ever had, someone who actively tried to help him, and he had destroyed it. For what? Justice? Vengeance? Some vague notion that destroying Shido would make up for having to grow up without a mother?

Akechi forced himself to his feet, taking in his surroundings. He was in some hallway, lined with gold and carpeted in blood red. His upper lip curled, but he wasn't sure if he was more disgusted with his father or himself. A hand curled over his aching stomach as he stared vacantly down the winding hallway.

Nothing else to do, he began slowly walking. One foot in front of the other. Tears leaking out from under his metal mask as he made his way through the labyrinth of Shido's victory. Akechi's gaze was fixed on the carpet, barely paying mind to the shadows wandering around him. He visited this place many times before, and for whatever reason, the shadows tended to ignore him. It wasn't until he heard footsteps of something much more human that he looked up.

There he was again. 

"Akira," Akechi breathed, pained and confused as Joker walked up to, and then passed right through him.

He turned, watching as he faded again a few steps down the hall. Akechi reached one hand out shakily, before letting it drop to his side again. He knew in his heart that the boy wasn't actually here. After all, he had shot him, he had watched him die. He remembered pressing the barrel to his forehead, the thief hadn't looked scared. He had only looked tired. Resigned, maybe. His last words before Akechi pulled the trigger had been 'You're better than this, Goro'.

But Akira had been wrong.

Akechi wasn't better than anything.

He deserved this. After all the suffering he had caused, Akechi deserved to watch it all crash and burn around him. And now here he was. Psyche splintered so hard he was sure it would shatter soon, regretting all the thousand things he could never take back. He felt dizzy. He felt sick. He wondered what his mother would think of this, or if she would even care at all.

He reached a big empty room, glittering windows with a view of the submerged country, marble floors that gleamed like snow, the sound of soft music playing over some unseen speaker as the twilit sky filled the room with a nostalgic glow. Akechi saw him again, standing there in the middle of the room, and the teen's legs gave out from under him again. He slumped against the door frame, clawed hands splintering the wood as he tried desperately to keep himself upright. All he succeeded in doing was dragging long, deep claw marks down the frame as he sank down.

"Why are you taunting me?" He whispered, teary eyes trying to search Joker's face for some answer.

"You know I'm not real," Joker replied flatly.

Hearing his voice made Akechi give a little sob. He curled one hand against his chest, "I wish I could take it back," he breathed.

"You can't," Joker said simply.

"I miss you," Akechi whimpered.

"You can't fix this," Joker answered coldly.

"Why didn't you stop me?" Akechi asked, looking at Joker through tear blurred eyes.

This time when the apparition spoke, it was soft, full of that desperate sort of gentleness he had heard from Akira so many time before, "I believed in you."

Akechi shook his head, claws scraping harshly up his helmet. He knew it was just his own guilt showing him this, that Akira wasn't really here, Joker wasn't really talking to him, but in his heart, he knew that's what he would have said. Because that was the truth, wasn't it? Akira had believed in him, believed he could be better, be a good person, and Akechi...well, he was here, and Akira wasn't.

When he looked up again, the hallucination of the thief was gone. 

_ Selfish Goro. Evil Goro. _

It took Akechi several minutes to steady himself enough to stand again. At this point, he wasn't really sure why he was still going. To make sure those people he killed weren't in vain? To fix the years worth of mistakes he'd made? Neither of those things were going to happen. But still he walked on.

He walked through the ballroom, faintly picturing a lovely world in which he and Akira could have danced in it, clawed hands trailing over tapestries as he passed them by. 

He made his was down another hall, and then another, winding and turning aimlessly when he came across one of the ship's fancy bathrooms.

Another glimpse of a person, this time one with honey brown hair and tired red eyes. For a moment, he thought it was his cognitive, and prepared for the worst. A shaky hand reached for his weapon, then stopped.

As the figure turned he realized. The person before him wasn't himself, it was his mother. Another vision borne of his own guilty mind, here to torture him some more. The blur that cling to her face was evident enough of that. He never could quite picture her clearly, even now.

His mouth began to form words, but they died in his throat. She looked hazy, but soft. He wished with all his heart that he could reach out and hug her. He clutched his chest with one hand, claws digging into the material over his heart.

"I…" He began weakly.

She looked at him vacantly, her face too distorted to make out any expression. She walked backwards until her heels hit the large bath in the room.

"Please," Akechi whispered, "I messed up, I messed it all up. I was wrong."

She sat down on the edge of the tub, her frosted glass face never turning from his. He tore off his helmet, looking at her without the visor tinting his vision. "Momma, don't," he barely managed to vocalize.

She raised one hand, reaching out to him. He took a hasty step forward only for the door to swing closed in his face. He cried out and ran to it, finding it jammed shut. He clawed at the wood, the fact it was just a hallucination completely forgotten.

"Momma! Don't go! Don't leave me again, please!" He sobbed, the metal of his gloves carving deep grooves into the thick door. "Momma! Momma please! I'm so sorry!" 

He slid to the floor, coming to a rest in a pile against the carpet. He hit his head against the closed door once, hands weakly scraping against it, not really trying to break through anymore. He should have been faster. He should have done more. He shouldn't have hurt people. He should have been a better son.

"Please...I don't want to be alone," he whispered.

"How pathetic," a voice from behind Akechi made him turn. He figured he should be frightened, or caught off guard, but he felt too heavy with grief to manage any other emotion. There he was, the double that Shido kept like some kind of well trained pet in his ship.

"I thought you had come to kill Captain Shido, but I see you're hardly a threat anymore," the cognitive scoffed.

Akechi pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly before he managed to brace himself against the door. "This is my last chance. I wouldn't just…just let him kill me how he pleased."

The cognitive pursed his lips, tilting his head, lifeless eyes scanning Akechi. He put both hands on his hips, "and what a way to go. Clawing pitifully at a wall and begging for your dead mother to save you."

Akechi whipped around, seeing he had, in fact, been clawing at a wall the entire time. Wallpaper torn to shreds, deep grooves in plaster that his hands a mess of white powder. He was too unstable to do anything, wasn't he? His eyes crinkled just slightly, a small, shaky breath escaping his lips, "I…"

"You have no fight left. Pitiful Goro," the cognitive mocked, "and now you've wasted your final moments chasing ghosts."

Akechi trembled, looking down at his plaster dusted palms. He wanted to stop Shido. He wanted to take back the last two years of his life. He wanted… he just wanted it to stop. All the pain, all the grief, all the people he had hurt and the meaninglessness of it all… 

"I just want things to be okay," Akechi murmured. "I...I want to take it back."

"Ohh," the cognitive cooed cruelly, striding up to Akechi. He gripped the boy's face in one hand, pulling him forward and forcing him to meet his eyes, "You. Can't."

The cognitive let go of Akechi, shoving his face roughly away from him. Akechi stumbled back a step, bracing against the wall once more. His double sneered, wiping his gloves hand on his coat as if Alechi had tainted him somehow.

"You caused this. All of it. And you're so  _ weak.  _ Why did you really go this far, Hm? For your mother? For acceptance? To feel like you could be more than the worthless garbage that you know you are?"

"Stop it," Akechi mumbled. "I wanted to...to ruin-"

"To ruin a man after you had ensured everyone in the country would trust his word over anyone else's?" The cognitive laughed, it was loud and sharp and it cut Akechi to the bone. "You're a fool."

Akechi slowly stepped away from the wall, his tired gaze rising to meet the cognitive's once more, "I am," he agreed. "I'm nothing but a puppet, someone for others to use and throw away once they've gotten what they need."

"You lived how you'll die," The cognitive said coldly, pulling a pistol from his coat, "helpless, broken, a detriment to everyone who ever had the misfortune of caring about you. You're a curse, and you know it."

Akechi's gaze shifted to the floor. He couldn't argue. He had no right. 

"So what now then? You're just going to shoot me?" he asked. 

_ I can't fix anything now. It's too late. _

"No," the cognitive said, voice filled with the gentlest whisper of poison. He flipped the gun around in his hand so he was gripping the barrel. "You aren't worth the effort."

Akechi lifted his gaze up, teary and confused as the double thrust his arm out, shoving the handle of the gun in his face.

"Do something right for once in your life," he nudged the gun at Akechi once more, "and pull the trigger yourself."

Akechi stared emptily at the gun. He reached up slowly, taking it from the double, who only smiled, wide and blank-eyed. 

_ It was all for nothing. _

"Try not to make things too messy. I hate big cleanups," the cognitive sighed.

Akechi clicked the gun. It was just a metaverse creation, but it felt so real in his hand. A perfect replica of the gun he had used so many times to do Shido's bidding. The gun he had killed Wakaba with. 

Maybe it was poetic in a way, he told himself. But he knew it wasn't. 

There was no poetry in a miserable orphan taking the lives of so many, only to shoot himself in the hallway of a monument to all his wrongdoings. 

There was nothing beautiful or righteous here. 

No justice for the boy who thought it his only driving force.

He turned the gun over in his hands, not once considering shooting his double. All his anger, his grief, his pain, all of it was directed inward.

His hands were steady as he turned the gun on himself. He looked up one last time, over the shoulder of his cognitive, he could see Akira. He was just watching in silence, expression unreadable. If Akechi was being kind to himself, he'd say that perhaps the thief looked a little sad. But he knew better.

Ghosts didn't mourn their killers.

And no one would miss someone like him.

"Tell momma I'm sorry. For everything," he said quietly. In some vain hope that Akira's spirit really could hear him, that he might take pity on his miserable rival and deliver his message. "I'd tell her myself, but we both know I'm not going to the same place as you two."

He held Akira's gaze as his lips wrapped around the barrel of the gun.

Just one last death. One final time he had to pull this trigger. It felt like he was drowning, trapped under a sheet of ice with no way back to the surface. So he took a deep breath, embraced his fading senses as the cold metal tapped the roof of his mouth, and let go.

  
  
  


_ Bang. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for readings! Feel free to yell at me in the comments, I love hearing from everyone, and using my writing to forcefully rip out everyone's hearts! <3


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